Currently, in a payment card transaction business involving merchants, acquirers and issuers, each processing entity may calculate the cost for fraudulent use of cards (some times known as cost of payments fraud) as simply the cost of fraud directly related to losses absorbed by the entity, i.e., net chargeoff absorbed by the entity. For example, an issuer calculates the cost of fraud as the amount of consumer fraud incurred and recorded as fraud losses by the issuers. An acquirer may calculate the cost of fraud as the fraud losses absorbed by the acquirer which have been charged back from an issuer.
However, because the “true” cost of fraud is not well understood by the processing members, the actual cost of fraud may be substantially higher than those being calculated by the stakeholders. For example, the costs associated with handling fraud related chargebacks, and risk management functions may be disregarded. Overall, the industry suffers opportunity costs related to lost card usage resulting from declined activity or customers using other payment channels to avoid real or perceived security concerns related to electronic payments fraud.
Additionally, accounting policy and expense classification differences exist among the processing entities for financial reporting. These differences among the processing entities make comparison of each entity's business performance with the industry standard difficult. Because of this lack of consistent comparison, many entities may not have the tools to make better investment decisions for improving parts of the business such as minimizing the cost for fraudulent use of cards.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for analyzing and determining all cost associated with fraudulent use of cards for each processing entity. Such a tool will enable informed fraud risk management business decisions. Risk and product managers can use the framework to develop and justify new business strategies, enhanced operating processes, and improved fraud control of solutions, products and services.
In addition, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for analyzing and determining a standard industry-wide benchmark/reference for cost of fraud associated with fraudulent use of cards for use by each participating entity. Such standard benchmark for cost of fraud can be used by the risk and product managers as a reference to evaluate their own costs for fraud to help optimize investment decisions.